The Caravan
Lebanon (2016)
A street theatre project co-designed and co-directed by Clown Me In and Theatre Témoin and produced by Beirut DC. The piece presented Syrian stories through recorded media and street performance throughout the Lebanon and Jordan. It reached 7,000+ audience through performance and postshow community dialogues around immigration to raise awareness and combat stigma.
The Caravan is a project that puts Syrian refugee voices from the Bekaa valley at the heart of a street theatre performance, literally, through the use of recorded storytelling audio. In 2016 we delivered storytelling workshops in refugee camps throughout Lebanon. Participants who wanted to tell their stories more widely recorded them to be shared online, and some of these stories were used to construct and tour a participatory street performance which was performed by two Syrian refugee casts throughout Lebanon, and toured by a professional Lebanese cast to Jordan and Tunisia.
The Caravan was implemented by Beirut DC in partnership with Sawa for Development and Aid, Clown Me In and Theatre Témoin and was made possible by support from the Drama Diversity and Development project (part of the EU’s Med Culture program, co-funded by the EU and the Prince Claus Fund), UNICEF and Goethe Institute. Off of the success of this first project, UNICEF went on to fund two more Caravan projects in subsequent years.
